“What makes you stay when your world falls apart . . . when you can’t find any hope . . . Tell me what makes you stay,” sings country music artist Deana Carter.
What makes you stay in your marriage? Whenever I pose this question to couples I receive a variety of answers. They say they stay because:
- they love each other
- they have a comfortable life together;
- they’ve made a lifetime commitment;
- they enjoy being together.
What all of these responses have in common is a fundamental truth about the marital relationship: Marriage is something good that we desire. What brings man and woman together and keeps them together is the goodness each spouse finds in the other and in their life in common. As Christians we believe that God intends for spouses to be a gift to each other, just as Adam and Eve were at creation. A gift is always something good.
Do you remember how your spouse-to-be first caught your attention? All you saw was goodness and beauty and it was intoxicating. Then gradually you started spending more time together and dreaming of a life as a couple full of promises, a “good” to be had. And so you married to embrace such goodness and to be embraced by it. As time passed you also discovered that you cannot embrace the goodness that your spouse possesses without also embracing the human limitations and shortcomings that are part of this imperfect human being. And so you carry on accepting that life as a couple has its plusses and its minuses, its joys and its sorrows, but you are certain that the plusses are greater than the minuses. Thus, you stay.
The difference between you and those couples who throw in the towel and give up on their marriage is your conviction that even in the darkest moments there is something good in your spouse and in your marriage, a value which is worth sacrificing for in order to preserve.
Never forget that the goodness you see in your spouse is God’s gift to you, a touch of his grace. Ask God to help you never lose sight of your spouse’s positive qualities and promise never to hide your own goodness from your spouse. Remember that what makes you stay is the experience of each other’s goodness and the blessings that your relationship brings to you.
Question for Reflection: Can you list all the qualities of your spouse that are appealing to you and the benefits of your being a couple?
John Bosio is a former marriage and family therapist, director of religious education, and diocesan family life coordinator. He and his wife, Teri, wrote Joined by Grace, a marriage preparation program from Ave Maria Press.
